On One Moonlit Night
by AKAAkira
Summary: Before they were the Black Cats of the Full Moon, they were their school's close-knit Computer Research Club. Sachi and her friends can't wait for the release of SAO, but it turns out they need to solve a little problem with their NerveGears first.
1. Prologue

**Summary**: Before they were the Black Cats of the Full Moon, they were their school's close-knit Computer Research Club. Sachi and her friends can't wait for the release of SAO, but it turns out they need to solve a little problem with their NerveGears first.

Takes place before the Aincrad arc.

**Disclaimer: Sword Art Online is owned by Reki Kawahara. I own absolutely nothing in relation to this work, except for the plot of this particular story.**

* * *

**Prologue**

In the years later, Sachi would look back and realize that the formation of the Black Cats started with the most innocuous of events. In this case, it was when a group of boys tried to feed worms to the school hens.

It was _supposed_ to be something that taught primary-schoolers some aspects of responsibility. They would divide into groups of five, and each team would be assigned a chore – watering plants, clearing the track of stones, stuff like that. It wasn't uncommon for Japanese schools to keep rabbits and chickens as impromptu pets so that the older grades could feed them or clean their pens as well. Sachi, then a fourth-year, and her group had been intending to do just that.

Things _had_ been going all right...up until they actually arrived at the pen. Apparently, this other group had been doing something else nearby (Sachi couldn't recall exactly what) that led them to suddenly finding a lot of worms in the dirt. Things kinda spiraled down from there.

"Whoa... Look at how many it's eating!"

"Oh, ew, that worm got bitten in half! And it's still moving!"

"C'mon guys, dig up some more!"

The sole girl amongst them fidgeted nervously. For boys, it must've been something fascinating to watch Mother Nature in action, where only the fittest survived and the weak was devoured in a vaguely gruesome manner. For Sachi, little Sachi who would never hurt a fly and was horrified of blood, the very thought of the worms' deaths left her nothing short of nauseous.

"Oota-san..." she let out softly, "I don't think we should be doing this..."

Oota was the biggest of the lot, and the one who egged on the others the most, which was why she named him. She immediately wished she hadn't; when the boy rounded on her, she was reminded of the boy's reputation with painful clarity. He was a bully. And he liked settling things physically.

He grabbed Sachi by her shoulder, heedless of her yelp, and dragged her forward until she was almost pressed against the chain-link fence that he had earlier flung worms through. "And what's wrong with it, huh? Isn't it fun to watch? Don't tell me you're a scaredy-cat!"

Helplessly, Sachi glanced to her side. Even after the years, the judgmental eyes of Oota's group, staring relentlessly at her, seemed as sharp as a needle; they were clearly on his side. Her own group, well... She didn't really get along with them – she made it a point to relocate herself as far away as she could when they were having their rough-and-tumbles, and they were all very awkward at talking to the opposite gender (and for Sachi, she felt awkward talking to _anyone_). It was sort of an unspoken agreement that this was a completely temporary arrangement, and Sachi didn't even try remembering their names. Not for the first time, she wondered what her teacher had been thinking, sticking one girl into a group of boys.

At the very least though, they didn't seem to be taking sides at all, watching with an uncertain air about them. That was something.

She turned back to Oota. "No, that's not it, it's just –" She searched her mind for an excuse. "It's just, if the hens get fed too much, they might overeat and die..."

"Then the school'll buy more hens," Oota said, "and we'll get to feed them again. There, everyone's happy. Now go on, throw them in."

He tossed several worms at Sachi unexpectedly, making her give a little shriek and drop them.

"What was that for?" the boy said angrily. "And I was nice enough to give some to you too! Pick them up!"

Nine-year-old Sachi shrunk back. "I –"

"Pick them up!"

Sachi flinched. It was well known by her classmates that she was timid, easily frightened. She fled from violence as if it was an incoming rock slide. And though most didn't know it, she had a _very_ good reason to fear getting hurt. In all honesty, she herself wouldn't have been surprised if that outburst convinced her to meekly obey.

Except, she didn't. For what was possibly the first time in her life, for the sake of mere earthworms that couldn't stand up for themselves, she gathered her courage, glared at Oota solidly, and said, "No."

Oota's face darkened. And then he pushed her, hard.

Sachi screamed as she tried to regain her balance, but though she managed to grab the fencing the momentum was enough for her head to bang heavily against the side of the pen. She fell on the ground, stunned and blinking stars away from her eyes, but unharmed as far as she could tell.

Oota stepped forward, but her own group finally intervened. "Hey, come on Oota," said one of the boys, the _de facto_ leader of their four-man band. "She's just a girl."

The bigger boy sent a glare at the speaker, who wisely retreated a few steps. "Whatever," Oota muttered, turning around. "C'mon guys, let's go. This isn't fun."

Sachi let out a relived, trembling sigh as the other group finally left. "I..." she started, intending to thank the boys, when her hand unconsciously felt the side of her face and came away wet.

She froze.

"There's a cut on your cheek," said one of the boys, not the first one. "It's pretty small, though."

The voice sounded far away, as if it was from the other end of a tunnel. All her attention was on the bottom of her palm.

Blood.

Her blood.

She was **bleeding**.

Her heart pounded, loudly. She couldn't breathe. The nausea came back with twice the force, as she thoroughly, completely, digested the fact that there was a cut on her cheek and **it was bleeding**.

"Hey, you okay? You look really pale."

Sachi's eyes refocused. Brown hair. Reluctant expression. It was the leader, the one that the others naturally relied on.

"Help," she whispered.

His brow furrowed. "'Help'?" he parroted, sounding unsure. "With what, the cut? Just leave it, it'll stop soon."

Sachi shook her head, and now the boy looked annoyed.

"Look, it's not a big deal, is it? It's just a little cut. If you really want to get it looked at go to the nurse's office."

He made as if to stand up, but Sachi desperately clung onto his hand. The blood smeared easily on his skin. "H-help," Sachi stammered, pleading.

"Oi –" the leader began exasperatedly, but one of the others cut him off, sniggering.

"Oh come on, it's not like it's a big deal, is it? Besides, we'll get to skip outta this period if we go with her and say we want to make sure she's okay."

The leader looked unsure, until another one of the boys said, "I'll tell the nurse we're coming!" and shot away. Then he sighed.

"Fine, let's go. You can walk, right?"

Sachi, at that time, missed the sarcastic tone in his voice. She rose unsteadily, leaning against the boy more than she'd normally be comfortable with, and all but made him carry her into the school building. Blearily, she registered the other two boys following leisurely behind them.

"Hey, watch it! You're getting blood on my clothes!"

Sachi shivered. She tried her best not to press against the boy, but try as she might, her arms refused to obey her – not out of inability, but out of fright.

Behind heard, she heard:

"Man, we're leaving blood on the floor. The teachers are gonna kill us."

"Then why don't you clean it up?"

"Wait, what!? Why me!?"

"You're the one who suggested following them."

Sachi's grip involuntarily tightened. The boy beside her winced in pain.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" the leader said, his frustration evident.

He probably hadn't asked that seriously. He might not have wanted an answer, even. But Sachi heard him loud and clear, and clung to the question like a lifeline, hugging it tight, seeking reassurance.

"I'm scared."

"What?" Now the boy sounded confused again. "Um, okay." A pause. Then –

"Wait," he said slowly. "That's a lot of blood coming from just a small cut."

Sachi shivered, and her hand slipped from its hold on the boy's arm.

"Whoa!" One of the other boys caught her before her legs managed to fully give out, and Sachi felt a rush of gratitude towards him. "Careful!"

"Hurry up, guys!" called out the boy who had run ahead to the nurse's office, just some metres in front.

With some difficulty, Sachi finally managed to enter her destination. As the boys let her go, she teetered with unsteady steps towards the nurse, who looked up from some papers on her desk. "What can I do for you?" she asked kindly, but then her eyes widened. "What's happened? Why is there this much blood on you boys?"

Sachi was exceedingly conscious of the boys still behind her. Suddenly, she didn't want to say it. She didn't want to tell them, she didn't want to let out her dark, dark secret because they might run away from her in disgust just when she finally thought she might be able to be friends with them. But she was tired, and she was scared. And when time was most likely a major factor against her, _friendless_ was preferable to _dead_.

Sachi managed one, pained whisper.

"I...I, have...hemophilia."

Behind her, there was a startled gasp. The nurse looked utterly flabbergasted for a full moment, and then she leapt out of her seat.

"You mean – it's not treated!?" she near-shouted. "Why didn't you tell anyone – No, before that, you shouldn't be moving! Oh my goodness, oh my goodness – I really hope you know what type you are, at least –!"

"Hemophilia?" Sachi heard the leader say behind her, quietly. "What's that?"

"It's when the bleeding doesn't stop," one of the boys said. "In the worst case..."

As the nurse hurriedly carried Sachi to the back, Sachi managed a glance back and saw the speaker's eyes aimed at her. She recognized the boy as the one who had run ahead to the nurse's office.

"In the worst case, the bleeding would keep going until she bled everything out and died."

* * *

Lying on one of the beds of the nurse's office, Sachi miserably thought.

It was about three years ago, in a shopping mall, that six-year-old Sachi learned that something was very wrong with her body. She had somehow wound up separated from her mother and wandered the floor alone. She remembered heading into the toys section, that place with the wonderful reflective plastic containers and the amazing models they contained inside. She remembered straining to grab one from where it hung, and getting to look at them closer. And she quite distinctly remembered one of them falling, because that was how she got a shallow but long paper cut on her hand.

At first she paid it no attention. It was just a little twinge, after all. But the longer she was enraptured by all the cool little features of such a tiny little thing, the more uncomfortable she became. There was a _drip, drip_ sound that hadn't stopped at all for a while and sounded quite close, and for some reason her hand had felt very wet. So she decided she had enough and put her object of attention onto a nearby shelf.

That was when she realized her hand and the floor was _covered_ in blood.

Sachi was not, naturally, a very loud person. It didn't even occur to her to scream, or to ask someone for help. To be honest, she didn't even understand what was going on. She simply stood there, staring with horrified fascination at her hand, and could do nothing but wonder how in the world all this blood fit in her body...and whether it would run out soon.

It was a stroke of fortune that a store attendant found her and realized immediately what she had. He had made a snap decision, a commendable one – he took her hand, wiped her arm the best he could, and led her out of the shop. There was another store in the mall, a pharmacy with a fully qualified doctor on-duty, that could help her where normal first-aid kits would not suffice. It was there that the grizzled old doctor patched her as well as he could, did a blood test on her, and then injected her with something called "Advate". He gave her a lollipop, asked her to hold on to the jar of Advate concentrate, and then told her that she had "Type A hemophilia" stemming from being "a carrier of a recessive X-linked chromosome" that "underwent a rare mutation, rendering the amount of clotting Factor VIII from your other X-chromosome", "insufficient".

"If you bleed too much, you can die."

It was a stroke of misfortune that her mother wasn't there at the time, or else what happened next would not have happened as it did. Frightened and lonely, learning just how fragile her life really is, Sachi had been trembling, beside herself, needing comfort that a doctor, a stranger, simply couldn't give. So when she actually did glimpse her mother, outside the pharmacy and searching for her, she ignored the doctor's repeated warnings to stay and ran outside when he wasn't looking.

"Sachi!" her mother had gasped, when Sachi crashed into her legs and hugged tightly, and then she snapped, "Where were you? Why did you go off on your own?" And then: "Who gave you that lollipop? And that jar?"

A little caught off-guard, Sachi had answered: "A nice man gave it to me."

It was a testament to Sachi's naïveté of the time that she didn't realize how this sounded to her mother.

Said mother's face tightened. "Did a nice man bring you here, too?"

Sachi nodded, unsure.

Without another word, her mother took both the candy and the jar from her, and then threw them into a nearby trash can without looking at the jar closely enough.

"We're leaving, Sachi."

A stroke of misfortune indeed, that Sachi completely missed her opportunity to tell her mother just what had happened.

_Ah_, she remembered thinking, mind and body numb from the sudden betrayal by her very own mother. _So she doesn't care. She doesn't care that I left, she doesn't care that I need that medicine to live...and she doesn't care that I might die any moment._

That night, she cried herself to sleep.

* * *

"You're lucky it was a cut and not a bruise," the nurse said, after having sprinted into the city and back to get what she needed. "If it had been a bruise, you might've never realized you were bleeding at all. Really, why didn't you _tell_ anyone?"

Sachi just raised the cover of the bed a little higher.

The principal had been notified, a local hospital had been notified, and – worst of all – her parents had been notified. She could just imagine it now, her mother and her father striding in. Taking a disinterested glance at her. Commenting, _Why isn't this girl dead yet? We made sure she hasn't had the medication for years now, and this is how she repays us? By surviving?_

And as if it had been a cue, there was a knock on the nurse's office. Sachi whimpered, then dug herself deeper into the bed.

"You may come in!" the nurse called out.

Sachi was lucky. In the following hour, she would learn, rather embarrassedly, that she had misjudged her parents all along, that in reality they really were kind and caring even if somewhat strict figures, and that her mother simply never realized the significance of throwing out the small jar that the younger Sachi had held. They would cry, they would hug, and they would ultimately make up before a misunderstanding of this magnitude could lead to a tragedy.

At the moment however, it wasn't her parents that entered.

The first clue was the nurse's shocked voice. "Boys! What _happened_?"

"Can we see her?" was the answer.

Timidly, Sachi peeked out from under her bedcovers. And then she shot straight up. "What – what happened!?" she repeated, gaping.

The boys from her group looked terrible. As if her blood hadn't been enough, they were all scuffed up like a cat had mauled them. One of the boys was nursing his side, another had a black eye, and the leader had actually lost a tooth.

But they were all grinning, and the leader was looking at Sachi resolutely.

"I just wanted to say –" To Sachi's bewilderment, the leader dropped his head down to a deep bow. "We're so sorry! We've been a group for so long, and we didn't even know... I feel really horrible just thinking about how we stayed back when Oota picked on you!"

Sachi connected the dots. "So – so you _fought_ him!?" she squeaked out.

The leader raised his head and nodded, a sort of fulfilled expression on his face.

"Aaah, but we lost, though..." the boy with the black eye whined. "Four on one, and we got beat up instead. That sucked!"

"H-hey! We weren't going to tell her that!"

Sachi couldn't help it. She let out weak laugh. The boys had such looks of _satisfaction_ on their faces, like they had fought for their own sake. It was the first time someone had done so overt an act of kindness for her, and...and...

And she felt touched.

"Thank you..." Sachi said softly, and to her embarrassment, she had tears of happiness in her eyes. "I'm sorry...I never even remembered your names, and yet..."

"Don't worry about it!" the leader laughed, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head. "We're at fault for that, too... But it's not like we can't start over again here, you know?"

Grinning, the boy indicated to himself with his thumb.

"You can call me Keita!"

* * *

**Changelog:**

**10/17/2013: I fail basic biology forever... Thanks to random guy (reviewer), the dialogue with the doctor has been changed so that Sachi is no longer some bizarre male-female freak of nature...or hermaphrodite...or a female Klinefelter...or a boy in drag.**

**I may as well note here, I'm planning on rewriting parts of this (including the dialogue with the doctor) after I complete this story. That's why I'm keeping a changelog. This'll probably include the x-inactivation phenomenon that random guy also suggested, so thanks for that idea as well. (I did go over the wiki page, I swear I have no idea how I missed that part...)  
**


	2. Start the Game

**Disclaimer: Sword Art Online is owned by Reki Kawahara. I own absolutely nothing in relation to this work, except for the plot of this particular story.**

* * *

**Chapter One – Start the Game**

The first thing Sachi heard as she entered the clubroom was a howl of outrage: "Dammit Satoshi, that shit is _way_ too cheap!"

"And I keep telling you, you can counter it if you'd just calm down and time your moves right," Satoshi replied, over Keita and Takemaru's animated squabbling about the fairness of a Star Rod and how Keita should go screw – "Oh hey, Sachi!"

She smiled. "Hello, everyone. Would you all like some tea?"

"In a minute. After Daichi finally learns how to use Bowser properly," was the tall boy's distracted reply. In his hands was an ancient controller for the Nintendo GameCube, and on-screen, Link was agilely frustrating Bowser's efforts to make a snack of him. Their stocks were three to one, respectively.

"'Learn', my foot!" Daichi whined, and then he yelped, frantically clacking the analog sticks to keep his character moving and alive. "See, see!? Isn't this just you whaling on me!? What did I do to deserve – CRAP CRAP CRAP –" (He accidentally elbowed Keita here, prompting a "Hey, watch it!") "_Gods_, that was way too close! C'mon man, didn't I apologize already for taking your manga? And your notes? And your sports drink?"

Satoshi twitched. Link nailed Bowser with an arrow, nearly blasting him off the stage. "Huh, so the drink _was_ you after all. Thanks for telling me that."

"Oh, shit –"

Sachi tuned out the profanity and yells as she reached for the hot water dispenser. The boys used to get someone to buy drinks from a nearby vending machine if they were thirsty, but Sachi had put a stop to that by hauling the machine here. Making tea was cheaper in the long run, and besides, it made her feel pretty good. She tried not to fall into the "mother hen" archetype of their little group, but it was hard not to find it funny that, at one point or another, her friends all expressly thanked the heavens for her being there, lest a teacher shut them down for how much their clubroom would end up looking like a hurricane had gone through it.

It still wasn't up to how she would've liked it, though. The room, even if bright and welcoming, felt fairly small; they had divided it in half, one side for "working" and the other for gaming. With the cabinets they had already crammed in, containing their collective hoard of videogames and their consoles (most piled on top instead of inside), there was almost no room for the couch they usually played video games from, let alone the cushions that were in theory for extra people to sit on the floor and in practice were just used to bash each others' noggins out. It was almost a joke to look at the sunbathed other side of the room (the only part someone would see, if they looked through any of the windows), relatively sparse with a table, a few stools and some things they might need to "work"; a school computer, scarce reference books, paper, and "a pencil case of everything" as Takemaru put it. That side was so neat, tidy and spacious that she almost got whiplash looking from one direction to the other. Sachi sometimes wondered if generations of mothers' naggings to clean up their room gave boys immunity to this sort of thing. (The water dispenser and the tea leaves were placed at the middle of the divide.)

Still, it was warm and it was cozy. Seeing that, Sachi really hadn't the heart to tell the boys to clean up after themselves.

There was a cry of "ATTAAAAACK!" as Keita joined the fray, taking Daichi's side. Beside him, Takemaru set down his controller and stretched, his character having lost. "Hey there Sachi, thanks as always."

"Anytime," she replied amicably, mischievously thinking to herself that it was a bad idea for him to look over at this moment. "Were you guys waiting for long?"

"Not too long, don't worry about it," Takemaru said. "This is a good warm-up before the main course, anyway. Though," he continued, turning around, "what _did_ take you that long –?"

His eyes found the answer, and froze.

_Called it_, Sachi thought with a bit of guilty pleasure.

The black cat she had set on the table earlier let out a cute meow.

"Is that Kuroneko?" Keita said, glancing back, an instant before he realized exactly how screwed he was.

Kuroneko, or just Kuro-kun as Sachi had taken to calling him, was something of an accomplishment for her. With her younger years dominated by a crippling fear of harm, Sachi had never grown comfortable with animals any bigger than a mouse, and she was quite afraid of most insects smaller than a mouse, too. When they found Kuroneko, without a collar, loitering around their middle school, Keita decided to remedy Sachi's problem. It took several scratches, a nasty crawl through a bush, and one very long afternoon chase, but Keita, Daichi and Satoshi had finally managed to catch and tame the cat. Then, once they were relatively sure the animal had calmed down, they spent the rest of the day coaxing Sachi into carrying it.

By this point Sachi received regular infusions of hemophilia-negating medicine, so there really would be no problems even if she was scratched – her injuries would heal like a normal person's. But mental scars were harder to repair, and it took much of the girl's courage to finally accept the cat that her friends had offered to her. In the end, though, it was all worth it. The cat felt so warm in her arms that Sachi had started crying anew, sending her friends into a panic. The animal in question had started licking her on the cheek, as if to comfort her. In later years the cat would come to her periodically; even now, when Sachi was a high school second-year, the cat would sneak into the school to see her, like it had done today. Sachi, in turn, would name the cat Kuro-kun, and always kept some fresh cat food handy to feed him. It was a beautiful friendship, one that Sachi would cherish forever, just as much as her friendship with the four boys who stood up for her.

Then the next day, they learned that not only was Takemaru violently allergic to cats, having a sneezing fit every time one was within two meter to him, he was, for some reason that he refused to explain, downright terrified of them.

Also, his typical reaction upon seeing a cat was to scream like a girl and then take cover behind the object closest to him. This time just happened to be Keita.

"KYAAAAAAAH!"

In a display akin to one who had just been emasculated, Takemaru dove at Keita and latched on with an iron grip, sending both tumbling to the ground, Keita cursing and Takemaru screaming, "KEITA THERE'S A CAT THERE OH GODS MAKE IT GO AWAY I DON'T WANT IT NEAR ME WHY IS IT EVEN HERE –"

"Dammit Takemaru, gerroff! I can't see the screen!"

Indeed, Satoshi had already taken advantage of Keita being distracted to lob several bombs around the field. Bowser was finally disabled with two negligent slashes, and then Link was free to tango around Keita's Samus, peppering in kicks until the character fell off the stage and exploded into a burst of light.

"Game," Satoshi said.

"Like hell," Daichi scoffed. "If Sachi hadn't come, me and Keita would've kicked your butt."

Sachi hmphed. "Oh, fine then. Since you obviously prefer that I'm not here, Daichi-kun, I guess that means you don't mind missing out on drinks."

"...I take that back. You're an absolute godsend, Sachi..."

Let it never be known that there was no price for crossing the cook. It helped that Sachi's teas were actually quite good.

Keita waved at them. "Uh, guys? Help?"

Takemaru whimpered. "Why, Sachi, why? Why must you torture me so? Haven't we been the closest of comrades for these last seven years? Didn't the hundreds to exams and thousands of tests we've gone together mean anything to you? How can you so cruelly punish me with such an innocent face?"

"I'm not being _that_ mean!" she protested, a pout on her face. Meanwhile, Daichi was busy prying Takemaru's arms open. "If Kuro-kun comes to see me I can't exactly stop him. Besides, isn't he cute?" She patted the cat on the head, making him stretch out in bliss.

"You never have a reaction until it's two metres to you," Satoshi added, "so stop worrying, Takemaru. So long as it stays away and we clean the place later, there shouldn't be any problems." Then, holding the controller out to Sachi: "You want a go?"

Sachi quite liked Satoshi. He was the "gentle giant" among the group; taller than even Keita, but really a nice and considerate person (his teasing of Takemaru notwithstanding). He was once scouted into a basketball team on account of his height; he quit after a while, saying it wasn't for him, even though he was doing fairly well. Satoshi was the kind of person who, when asking a question, would only give an answer after deep thought.

He wasn't the best gamer out of them, but he was the one with the fastest reflexes. In-game, he tended to use the name "Tetsuo"; the same _kanji_ as his real name for "Tetsu", and then an "o" _kanji_ added in.

Sachi shook herself back to the present and smiled. "Sure!" She set the tray of tea onto the coffee table in front of the couch, took the controller, and then flopped onto the armrest with playful zeal. (Takemaru sneezed once and gave her a reproaching look.)

"All right!" Daichi yelled, resetting the stage. "Round Two, here we come!"

The battle degenerated into a mass of cries and curses, mainly by Keita and Daichi. Takemaru lost early, which wasn't really surprising considering he kept glancing in fear at Kuro-kun quite frequently, and then spent the rest of the game comically huddling and trembling ("The whiskers... _The whiskers_..." he kept muttering. Sachi really did wonder what happened to him). That left it a three-way, mainly between Daichi and Keita with Sachi trying to run interference or do sporadic damage, but somehow Sachi's character Peach got hit by a stray missile ("Okay, _that_'s new," Daichi chortled in mock admiration) and she didn't manage to jump back onto the stage before she fell. The match finally ended when a Beam Sword dropped onto the stage ("Grab it! Grab it!" Sachi had cried when she spotted it first) and in the ensuing struggle to get it Daichi had almost accidentally Up-Smashed Samus, sending her out of the game.

"In your face! I win!" Daichi hooted.

"You won incidentally, while you were trying to get an item," Satoshi pointed out amusedly.

"Shut up and talk to the victory screen!"

Keita turned the TV off. "Okay, time to get down to business."

While Daichi bemoaned the loss of his proof of victory, Sachi went over to Kuro-kun and patted him on the head. "Thanks for visiting, Kuro-kun. I'll have to see you later, okay?"

Their clubroom was on the first floor, so Sachi could let the cat out from the window. Once dangling outside, Kuro-kun slipped from her grasp, landing on the ground smoothly and giving a good-bye meow before walking away. Sachi waved once before closing the window.

"Is the furball of doom gone now?" Takemaru asked shakily.

"Really, 'Maru-kun?" Daichi said. "'Furball of doom'?"

"You don't know what those things can do!" Takemaru grabbed his head. "Oh my god, don't make me remember it, don't make me remember it..."

"I said we're getting down to business," Keita said crossly. When Takemaru coughed embarrassedly and settled down, their leader continued. "All right then, I think we all know the subject of this meeting." His eyes burned in that determined way of his, that Sachi sometimes thought was a defining trait of a manga protagonist.

"Sword Art Online – is coming out in five days!"

They all did know it. It didn't stop them from straightening a little, their anticipation stoked. They read the online reviews; SAO was the cream of the crop of VR games, even including the ones that hadn't come out yet. Gameplay, controls, visuals, audio... If what they heard was true, there was almost nothing lacking in it, and what little criticism there was could only be directed at difficulty and lack of overall plot – and even then, those criticisms had been halfhearted. By this time, no true gamer would ever question _if_ they were going to get it – they would only question _when_ they'd be able to.

Even Sachi couldn't contain her excitement, and she was the least experienced of all of them. She could still remember the first time they got her to play an MMORPG; she had gone and entered her real name as her character name, and stubbornly insisted to their later grins that of course she planned to do it, her name could be read as "fortunate" and she was going to need all the luck she could get. (Though it could also be interpreted as "spoiled". Her real name was in _hiragana_ though.)

But the point was, even she realized the sheer potential of the game. It would be different from before, when she had to make do with watching her avatar on-screen. It would be everything she had ever dreamed of doing that she could never muster the courage for in real life. Mortality left behind by the magic of FullDive, she was confident – she will _be_ the avatar, fighting with a sword in _her_ hands, and the things she could accomplish wouldn't be attributed to some character she made, but to _her_.

"We're serious, huh?" Daichi said, an eager grin on his face. "We're really, _really_ going for this, huh? To get in there and get to the top?"

"No point backing out now," Takemaru said, seemingly over his episode with Kuro-kun.

"And to do that, we need to train," Keita added.

"The NerveGears," Sachi said.

The club was barely legitimate, with the founders leaving last year and most of this year's recruits never showing up past the first meeting, but they did have enough members and so received funding from the Student Council. They kind of abused it, committing every yen that was allocated to their budget to the purchase of five NerveGears, which sure made a hefty discount. Oh, the StuCo President was furious all right, but with the VR games reviews that they produced for the school newspaper, he wasn't able to find a good reason to punish them.

So far, the games had been lacking – they lacked the _inspiration_ needed to use the NerveGear to its fullest. There had been a flying racing game, but the sensation of height had felt really weird and no one felt like they were actually in the air. There had been a Nintendogs plus Cats game that Sachi got, but though they reproduced the feel of a cat right, the AIs were simplistic and not really realistic. (Though their bigger problem was getting Takemaru anywhere close to one to see if his allergy still worked in VR. That was when they realized another problem – though the physics were correct none of the humans had their strength outputs regulated, so if two or more people entered at once, expect several hours being spent on throwing each other clear across the room.) And finally, a simple title called "Gourmet", all about sampling food. It was actually the best game they had tried so far, having few problems up until the point where a slice of cake glitched and exploded in Daichi's mouth.

Sword Art Online would fix all that, created by the same person who created the NerveGear. True, their primary focus would be to review the game for the school. But as soon as that was out of the way, as soon as there was a clear way to the top...

"Most people are planning to get the NerveGear and SAO in a bundle to save on money," Satoshi said. "But if we want to be the best, we have to get accustomed to moving in a body that's not our own."

"Exactly," Keita said, a grin on his face. "We go in, and train like crazy. That way, when the real thing comes, we can level faster, form a guild, and dominate the front lines! That's the plan!"

There was a short pause.

"We still haven't made a guild name yet?" Takemaru said.

"I think Ducker's Cronies sounds fine," Daichi said.

"No," Satoshi sighed. "Just..._no_."

"Can't we use the names of guilds we joined in other MMORPGs?" Sachi asked.

"But that's not _original_," Daichi whined. "We need something, you know, totally us!"

"Told you we should've made a guild ourselves, Keita," Takemaru said.

"How about..." Sachi said, her mind whirring, thinking over Keita's line, "the...the...the Dominators?"

There was another pause.

"It says a lot about us that that's actually the best name we have so far," Satoshi noted.

"A-anyways!" Keita cleared his throat. "That's the plan! To train ourselves so that we're practically VR citizens! But, it won't be that easy in SAO. Nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-five other people will be competing with us for the exact same thing. It'll be grueling, it'll be fraught with difficulties, and our competition will be formidable. But despite that – no, _because_ of that – I'm still willing to forge ahead. I'm still willing to fight my way through!

"Will you guys, stay by my side, all the way to the top?"

Keita looked at each of them in the eye. He must've liked what he saw, because his grin became wider.

"Then – let's game!"

He swung open the cabinet that held their NerveGears. They all knew their procedures. One, usually Sachi, would get to lie on the couch while the rest laid on the floor with a cushion. A note would be put up on their clubroom's door asking them to knock loudly and wait, while Keita had built a small device that picked up such sounds, communicating with a peripheral on his NerveGear that would send him an in-game notification that someone had knocked. This way, they wouldn't have to be rudely awakened by someone yanking the NerveGear off if they had business with their club.

Though, that was assuming they got that far into their procedure. As soon as Keita had swung open the cabinet, it became apparent to the five people in the room that there was one, rather conspicuous problem that hindered their ability to carry out such a routine.

Their NerveGears were missing.


End file.
